


pomegranate-blueberry tea

by gayforroxane



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: F/M, also bipolar MJ?, also bipolar disorder sucks, also i love all of you, and ned is my fav, just a cute little fic thing, just please remember that, like sucks massive and sweaty cock, or it was and then there were chapters, this was a series and then i changed my mind
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-13 11:34:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11758989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayforroxane/pseuds/gayforroxane
Summary: She doesn’t look beautiful, in this moment. Her hair is tangled and unwashed, her cheeks are stamped with pillow marks, and the shirt she’s wearing probably hasn’t been washed in a week or more. When he gets closer, he knows her lips will be raw and sore-looking, that the corners of her eyes will be crusty with sleep, that her fingers will be bleeding and probably bruised from chewing them so aggressively. She’ll smell like sweat and bad breath mixed with whatever flavour tea she’s drinking.But she's just so MJ he can't resist.MJ doesn't come to school for a few days because depression sucks, and Peter brings her tea. oh, and he meets her family.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> have a little baby fic from me to you  
> also i don't have bipolar disorder, but my mom does and this is purely based on her illness and what happens to her because of it, and this is by NO FREAKING MEANS a guide to handling bipolar disorder or anything else, okay?
> 
> cool

He meets her in MJ’s kitchen, while she’s sitting on the counter laughing and clutching her stomach, and he’s trapped, suspended from the ceiling by _his own webbing_. He feels strangely betrayed.

They’re at MJ’s – an apartment in the Bronx, on a decent street, farther from school than he expected, with hardwood floors and clean windows and a smell like lemon and cinnamon that reminds him of _Christmas_ and _MJ_ and _take-out Thai_ , and he loves it (loves her), maybe a lot – when a woman walks in, holding a child on her hip, a child on her shoulders, and a child at her side.  

He freezes.

His gaze flicks over her bare feet and the colossal bun piled on top of her head, over the _youngness_ of her face and hands and hair. His breath rattles and he yanks his hand off the ceiling, landing on the floor in a crouch, leaving a _splat_ of webbing on the stipple. He opens his mouth to speak, to explain —

“You must be Peter!” She crows, shifting the child to extend a hand towards him. He takes it, gently.

“Uh—” He says, eyes wide.

“ _Maman_ ,” The child on her shoulders says, “ _C’est lui! C’est lui! Il est Spider-Man, eh, maman? Mamaaan_.” She draws out the last syllable, tapping her fingers against her mother’s cheeks. 

The woman turns her head to catch the child’s fingers in her mouth, blowing a raspberry as she does. She sets the boy on her hip on the floor, then the girl on her shoulders next to him. She says, “ _Vas-y! Vas-y!_ ” The girl starts to say something, gesticulating wildly, but her mother hushes her. “He’s not Spider-Man, Océane. Now, get out and let me talk with Michelle’s new friend.” Her voice doesn’t leave room for argument, and the three kids leave immediately. The little boy stares at Peter with wide eyes as he goes around the corner, bumping into the wall.

“I’m sorry about that, Peter, the little ones can be such a handful. You and MJ are studying for the SATs, aren’t you? You’ll be best in the loft – Océane and Guillaume both know that you two won’t be bothered, but Cléo might get a little curious. He’s much more like MJ than the other two,” She says it in rapid-fire, accented English.

Peter gapes.

Is this… Michelle’s _mom_?

She barely stands to his chest, though the ball of perfectly round, neatly confined dreads gives her an extra five inches of pretend height. A white pencil skirt wraps tight to her waist, hips and thighs, and a forest green blouse tucked beneath a sunflower yellow blazer embroidered with small blue and purple flowers has him blinking, mouth still opening and closing. She doesn’t look much older than him, beneath the business clothes and the three kids. He can’t imagine that she’s Michelle mom, unless she was –

MJ clears her throat. “Uh, Peter this is my brother’s partner, Dominique.” She says the French name with a flawless accent that has Peter’s eyebrows raising in bewilderment.  

Dominique smiles at him softly, brushing her eyes over the black eye and split lip he’s still sporting from his patrol the night before, over his shoulders and up to the webbing on the ceiling. She nods to it. “Could you get that down for me, Peter?” 

He flushes and frowns at the same time.

“ _Maman_ ,” MJ says, more urgent than Peter’s ever seen her before. “Please, no one can know—”

“And they won’t,” Dominique interrupts smoothly. “But your brother won’t be home for a week and we’re both too short to get it. Besides,” She raises an eyebrow at Peter, “I think it’s the least he owes me for the time I’m going to have to dedicate to convincing my children that their Aunt’s boyfriend _isn’t_ actually Spider-Man.”

“O-Of course, Mrs. Jones.”

“He’s not my boyfriend, Dominique,” MJ says absently, as if she couldn’t care less, watching Peter very carefully climb up the wall and across the ceiling to peal the webbing from its place. “Peter,” she continues, picking at her nails and sticking her tongue out at her sister when she wiggles her eyebrows. “Doesn’t your webbing dissolve two hours after you—”

Peter groans.

Dominique laughs.

 

Meeting MJ’s sister-in-law, knowing where she lives, seeing her giggle with her nieces and nephews as he butchers their incredibly French names (Guillaume is the worst – the ‘L’s are silent and the word is torture) makes her an entirely new person. It’s like someone took tinted contact lenses out of his eyes, revealing the world (but mostly MJ) in full, vibrant, _authentic_ colour.

Seeing her means more than noticing how bright her eyes get when she talks about what books she’s reading, or cataloguing her different smiles and tones of laughter, or recognizing her jokes and mannerisms well enough to be able to mimic them and follow her train of thought effortlessly. It means they sometimes speak the same words at the same time. (Ned hates it). It means he knows what books she’s reading and who her favourite authors, but it also means he knows she has nightmares. It means he knows in vivid, stunning detail, that her father died during the Battle of New York, crushed by a burning building while trying to get people out. It means that some days he can feel the phantom marks on his skin that her mother left on Michelle’s. It means he can name the placement of her scars from thrown plates and vases, from cutting, cruel words, inspired by grief and loss.

Very quickly, without pretense or preamble, Michelle Jones becomes the second most important woman in his life.

So, he’s worried about her. Sometimes he can’t believe it – because who the hell does he think he his, worrying about a woman as fierce as MJ? MJ, who he only really started to _know_ two months ago, who goes to protests on weekends, and drinks tea and sweet coffee like her life depends on her caffeine intake, and reads and reads and reads and could lecture him about most subjects better than the majority of their teachers; MJ, who pops pills everyday at lunch in the girls’ bathroom, who spends two weeks not sleeping and nine days doing nothing _but_ , who insists she doesn’t need anyone – either because she’s better than them, or because she doesn’t deserve them. MJ, who got him through his first panic attack, holding his hand, speaking low and soft and rumbling, deep beneath her breastbone.

He’s a little (read: a lot) in love with her, so he worries. It thrums in the place just behind his eyes, and at the hollow of his throat and the hard press of his sternum. She’s alluded to the chemicals and biology that keep her from sleeping, that urge her to sleep, that force empty promises from her mouth, that keeps her firmly away from pot and cigarettes and alcohol, but she’s never actually told him about it. He knows the pills she takes are lithium tablets, which are prescribed for bipolar disorder.

He knows that the times when she calls him at four in the morning wired on Red Bull are normal. He expects her furniture to be rearranged differently when he goes up to her room directly after those phone calls, because she couldn’t sleep, and her chemical-ridden brain told her it was a good idea.

He knows she goes to therapy three times a week, because refuses to be shy about telling them that’s where she’ll be. It’s not bragging – though Ned confused it for that at first. It’s because she refuses to be trapped by society’s stigmas surrounding therapy and counselling. (He wonders why she hasn’t told them about _why_ she goes to therapy).

Sometimes he assumes it’s because _she_ assumes they’ve already worked it out. It’s not an unfair assumption, because both he and Ned have brought it up to each other, talking through the symptoms and signs, doing research, and asking questions to Google and Aunt May and Ned’s mom, who’s a doctor. But they both agree not to ask. They don’t question her falling asleep in class, or failing a test, or the days when she can’t get out of bed because her limbs are molasses and tar.

One time, late at night when Ned is ‘sleeping’ on the bottom bunk, he asks, “Does… Does MJ’s having bipolar disorder ever stop you from liking her, or like make it harder or anything?”

Peter knows it’s not what Ned means. It’s not intentionally unkind, but the extremes are hard to deal with and it’s not the _most_ insensitive thing he’s ever said. The comment about no one wanting Peter to be himself was pretty bad.

“No,” Peter says, “I-I-I mean, it’s hard as shit sometimes, you know? Like making her eat and sleep and _shower_ , whether she’s like, manic or-or depressed, but…” He pauses. “She’s just so kind, you know? Like, not in an obvious way, not in a Liz way, but she is. She’s – She’s genuine. She’s smarter than we’ll ever be, more observant and conscientious, a-and she _loves people_. Even the ones who hate what she looks like, or who she supports politically – she stills cares about the outcome of their lives. If she didn’t care she wouldn’t try to like change their minds to the degree she does – with her protest and her buttons and all the posts on Instagram and everything. And –” He places his hands flat against the ceiling, sticking easily. As he peals his palms from the cracks, he says, “She’s beautiful – completely stunning. She’s – ” His voice goes soft. “ – She’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever met.”

In the dark, Ned smiles privately. His best friend is a _superhero_. He can literally stick to walls and ceilings and lift a car, kill and hurt and break and maim people, but Michelle never fails to make him soft. She makes his eyes soft and his mouth soft and his hands soft, and his soft voice _softer_ and sweeter. She definitely makes his cheeks softer and pinker, too.

With Liz, Ned was sure it would never go anywhere. Maybe they’d have a great few months, but they’d have an amicable break-up and fondly remember each other only occasionally. But with MJ? He doesn’t take a lot for him to picture them _lasting_. He’s talking _years_ of bickering and dating and maybe even getting married some day, if Michelle doesn’t decide to fuck the patriarchy and just _not_.

That is, the two of them would have to get their heads outta their asses first.

 

He shows up at the Jones’ on the fourth day of MJ not being in class. It’s longer than he’s used to, and he’s (bet you can guess!) worried. He’d come home from school a wreck, alternating between napping on the ceiling and obsessively checking his phone until Aunt May whacked him with a broom, sat him down on the couch and demanded he tell her what was on his mind.

“It’s MJ, isn’t it?” She asked, before he could even open his mouth. “You’ve mentioned that you and Ned think she’s got bipolar disorder, did something happen with that?”

Peter smiles a little. She knows him so well. “She hasn’t been at school for a few days, and it’s way longer than usual, you know? Like she’d usually at least _come_ , even if she didn’t stay awake, or even stay all day. This is so weird.”

May pulled her hair from her face and adjusted her striped shirt, waiting for him to continue.

“And it sucks, May, because I can’t help her. _Spider-Man_ can’t save her from this one, or even help out, like at _all_. The webs and the super strength and even _Karen_ can’t help MJ’s brain screwing up which chemicals come when and why.”

Pulling him closer, she smoothed his hair away from his face. “Okay,” She said softly, “I’m gonna help you save your girl.”

Peter laughed and pulled away. “Michelle would _hate_ that!”

May rolled her eyes and ribbed him gently. “Go shower, and then _Peter Parker_ is going to go to his _best friend’s_ house and talk to her guardian and see if there’s anything he can do or grab or say to help her feel better.”

He nodded eagerly and took the fastest shower of his life, quickly changing into soft-tight-legging-things he stole from MJ and a sweater he stole from Ned. He’s fairly certain the outfit makes him look like a particular poorly dressed gorilla _and_ a poorly dressed fratboy/douchebag (the MJ in his head points out that those two creatures are practically synonymous), but it had made her smile last time he had worn it, and she’d spent the whole night buried deep in his side. 

“Peter!” May called as he opened the door, backpack slung over one shoulder. She handed him three twenty-dollar bills. His eyes went wide. “Pick up some tea, a heating pack, her favourite chocolate – ”

“May, she’s not on her period! I don’t even know if any of that will help – !”

May shook her head when he tried to hand it back to her, saying something about having some savings for her. “I care about her, too, Peter. Pick up some stuff you think she’ll like, okay?”

He smiled.

Standing in front of the Jones’ door, his backpack laden with Earl Grey, pomegranate-blueberry Pukka, and three different types of Chai, a container of raspberries, and a new succulent that he _thinks_ she doesn’t have, but isn’t sure, he feels a wave of apprehension wash over him. What if she doesn’t want his help? What if she’d prefer to be alone? What if her sister disapproves? What if her _brother_ does?

The door opens before he can raise his hand to knock.

Dominique, smiling boardly, Océane sleeping fitfully against her side, beckons him in with a gesture. Her hair is cast in dreads down to her hips and her face is clear of makeup for the first time since he’s met her.

“I-I don’t mean to intrude, Dominique, I just –”

“Hush, Pierre, it’s fine,” She says, pulling Peter into an unexpected hug. He gets a whiff of lemon and cinnamon, like and unlike Michelle. Absentmindedly, he realizes that they must use the same shampoo. “She’s in her room.”

He smiles at her, dropping a kiss onto Océane’s head as she stirs. She mutters something in French and he thinks he catches his name before she nuzzles into her mother’s side and falls back asleep. Dominique laughs lowly.  

He’s ambushed by Cléo and Guillaume in the hallway, who both greet him with big grins and pleased, accented whispers. Alex, Michelle’s brother, emerges from one of the rooms, and sends the kids to bed with a roll of his eyes and a reprimand Peter doesn’t catch.

Alex is built like MJ – tall and slight, with dark hair curls around his face and brown eyes that stare and move in continuous, unwavering deadpan.

He turns to look at him. For a moment, Peter thinks he might send him away, before the man says, “What did you bring for her?”

“Uh.” Peter scratched the back of his neck. “A whole bunch of tea, and some raspberries, and a-a new… plant?”

Alex grins at him, scuffing his hair as he goes by. “Try and get her to have a shower, okay, kid?”

Toeing his shoes off at the bottom of the steep, narrow ladder that led up to Michelle’s room, he whispers, “MJ? Can I come up?”

There’s a beat of silence, and then, “Sure, loser.” He winces. Her voice is hoarse and cracking, a little muffled, like she hasn’t moved in a few hours.

Her room is a loft/attic/strange little crawlspace above the hallway just outside their bathroom. It’s the least helpful, most conspicuous, and odd place to have a drop-down ladder from a mystery room, which is definitely why Michelle chose it. One wall is almost entirely a window, with a wide windowsill and no screen. He’s caught her reading there, her feet dangling seven stories above the ground, multiple times. When he pokes his head above the whole in the floor, he’s surprised by how bright it is. The lights are off, but the setting sun shines directly into her room, washing everything in red and pink and deep, burning orange. She’s cuddled deep in her duvet, facing the window, leaning against the headboard. Her hair is thrown up in a messy bun, curls falling into her eyes and across her mouth. Cradled between both of her hands is her favorite cup – a huge, cream-coloured, square mug with a single imprint of a bicycle with a basket full of flowers stamped on one side.

She doesn’t _look_ beautiful, in this moment. Her hair is tangled and unwashed, her cheeks are stamped with pillow marks, and the shirt she’s wearing probably hasn’t been washed in a week or more. When he gets closer, he knows her lips will be raw and sore-looking, that the corners of her eyes will be crusty with sleep, that her fingers will be bleeding and probably bruised from chewing them so aggressively. She’ll smell like sweat and bad breath mixed with whatever flavour tea she’s drinking.

But she’s just so _MJ_ he can’t resist.

(It’s moments like this when he realizes that he’s so completely, helplessly head-over-heels for her that it’s kind of disgusting, because even when she’s _disgusting_ he still loves her and wants to kiss her)

(God, a grip on this situation would’ve been great so he could’ve stopped it, but he’s sort of resigned to his fate of loving her at this point)

This is _MJ_ , unfiltered and unapologetic.

It’s something that he noticed about her when they were on the cusp of friends: she never apologized for how she looked. If he knocked on her door at night when they were at Regionals for Decathlon, or if she was caught in a depressive swing, or a manic fight – not once. He loves it.

He loves her, really, but society tells him that’s probably a little weird, a little creepy. He’s fine with that, though. He’s fine with her never knowing, because he’ll know, at least.

(along with Ned, Aunt May, and probably the rest of the Decathlon team, MJ’s nieces and nephews and her brother and sister-in-law, and maybe even MJ one day, but he’s fine with loving her privately, without her returning it at all)

(though, he’d never turn her down)

“Ladder up or down?” He asks, voice barely a whisper. One of his feet is in her jeans from the day before and his other is inches from a pile of folded, black and blue and orange lace underwear and bras. He flushes and glances toward MJ, waiting for her answer. “Michelle?” He prompts, and she shifts her hands around the mug.

“Up,” She says.

She doesn’t look away from the window.

He pulls the ladder through to fold it into the bottom of the door in the floor, latching the door carefully shut. Dominique and Alex never seem to mind if it’s just the two of them, and he guesses they know nothing would be happening – especially when Michelle was so low. Not that anything would’ve been happening anyways. His cheeks flush pink.

He clears his throat and walks around the bed, casting his shadow across her white walls with their protests and pictures and old polaroid-smiles, crawling across it to settle next to her, stretching his legs out to bump against hers.

She doesn’t move, which he takes as a good sign.

He’s never actually _done_ this before. He’s seen her at school, and in the morning when he went to pick her up for school (because Ned got a car, and it’s twenty minutes out of their way, but her trek to school is _brutal_ ), but he’s never actually gone to help her before.

He pulls his backpack off his shoulders, pulling out the raspberries first, placing them on his jeans. He doesn’t want them to leak across her bedspread. The tea emerges next, placed in a little tower in the space between the two of them. And then the succulent, about three inches tall with long, tapering leaf-things, stripped with textured white strips. It sits in a small white pot.

Next to him, she watches the play of the sunset across his face, the little furrow between his eyebrows as he burrowed in his backpack for the melting Snickers bar slightly crushed beneath his binders. She watches his hands – strong and long-fingered and broad-palmed. He shoves the bag over the edge of the bed.

“Do you want more tea?”

She drags her gaze from his hands to his chin to his nose to his forehead and misses his eyes entirely. Blinking heavily, she says, “Please.”

He places the succulent in her hands and somersaults off the end of the bed. An electric, plug-in kettle mopes on her desk. He fills it up using the two liter water bottle in his bag and flips the switch, listening to it bubble, humming absently to himself.

He hears Michelle lick her lips and brush her hair from her face. “Thanks for the plant,” She says softly. And then, softer still: “And for the tea, and the raspberries. ”

He shrugs. “It’s no problem, I wasn’t doing anything tonight anyways.” It’s a lie, but she doesn’t say anything. “I brought your homework, but I know the teachers know about your extended absences and I think Ms. Donegan excused you from the biology lab we did this week.”

He says it like it really isn’t a problem and the sunlight is still filtering over his grey hoodie and his _face_. His face is decidedly unfair. His lips are thin and one of his eyebrows is getting some kind of divorce from the other, but he’s _here_ and _the sunset_ and _wow_.

“I love you, you complete loser.”

The words kind of tumble and spin and spurt out of her, and, well, she knows her brain is starting to filter the correct chemicals to where they belong, because that would’ve taken a lot of effort six hours ago, but this wasn’t really her intention. Besides, the saying-the-wrong-thing thing is _Peter’s_ thing, not hers.

The kettle hisses.

He holds his hand out for her mug and she hands him a box of the pomegranate/blueberry tea (where did he even _find_ that? She’s been looking for a new fruit tea for _weeks_ ).

Handing her the tea, he settles back into his spot next to her.

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and neither does she. Her heart is going faster than it has in the last few days, which means it’s finally beating at a normal, healthy human rate.

The tea is really good, and she smiles.

“I love you too,” He says. And then turns bright pink, turning his head to meet her eyes earnestly, ears and neck flushing and any other time she’d be ribbing him for it, but those words and that thought process is too much right now, so she’s content to sit and smile a little and watch his fumble. “But – ” He hesitates. “I-I-I’m in love with you, and I’m not sure that’s what you meant, and if it’s not that’s fine, because we’re still friends and you’re my best friend and that’s the thing that matters more than anything else, you know? You’re so beautiful a-a-and – ”

“ – Peter,” She murmurs, dropping the boxes of tea off the side of her bed. She places the raspberries and the plant carefully on her bed side table, before linking their fingers. “You can tell me about how in love with me you are later, okay?”

He grins a little bit. He drops a kiss onto her hair, then onto her forehead and nose and cheek. She makes a pleased little humming noise under her breath, and proceeds to maneuver him like a pillow or a blanket. She tosses her leg across his hips and curls her hand into his sweater, plastering herself along his side.

When she nuzzles into his side, he thinks of her sister.

Her breathing evens out so quickly he wonders if she’s faking it, but he reaches for his phone and manages to text May and Ned without her waking.

He shifts. He places his hand on her thigh, wraps his arm around her shoulders and tucks himself closer to her.


	2. rattle, rattle! shouts the pills

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MJ goes through a manic episode - which are just as shitty as depressive ones by the way

MJ hasn’t slept in a week.

Her moments of awareness are far and few, but they show her the lack of texts and calls from Peter and Ned, and the frown that seems permanently nestled between his eyebrows.

Her hands shake. Her words stumble.

She isn’t sure what she said to them; if she rambled her way through a claim of superiority, or insulted their intelligence, or claimed that they could fuck right off because she knew what she was doing and where she was going and she didn’t need anyone as useless as them dragging her down. (The answer is d: all of the above)

Maybe she broke up with Peter.

A haze catches her when she’s caught in the extremes. It blurs the edges of her memories, fucks with her sleep pattern until she’s lost in a storm of caffeine and all the projects she can think of.

Dominique pulls her out of school. She says her teachers can’t handle the uncertain and trembling mouth and hands. Her teeth mutter.

Her home – her room – with her potted plants and light holds her for two weeks afterwards. In that time, she reads every book on her shelf, and reorganizes them by colour, by size, by colour and size, by texture, alphabetically by author’s first and last name and the title.

She finds a lighter.

Cleo’s crying stops her from flicking the spark to light over the neatly-stacked pile of pages in the centre of her room.

The pile is every page seventeen, thirty-three, and three hundred and three in all the books in her room, including her baby book, and her father’s cracking bible.

She goes back to school despite Dominique and Alex’s protests and becomes Michelle.

Lunches are spent alone at her own table, reading a new copy of  _The Second Sex_ by Simone de Beauvoir, and her classes in silent, quietly sketching Peter and Ned and Flash and Abraham, even Mr. Harrington once or twice, pretending that her drawings can replace the hole they’ve left in her brain. There isn’t a lot of brain left for left to eat away as it is.

The high still lurks in the tick of her fingers. The mania thrums in her never-ending internal monologue, flitting and flying like tiny hummingbirds with skeleton wings and striped beaks.

It takes two and a half months for her to emerge complete, blinking and spitting and bleeding.

She stumbles and her family catches her.

Guillaume, Cleo, and Oceane overwhelm her with small gifts they’ve found, but have been keeping for until ‘our favourite Aunty came back!’

Dominique asks her why she started cutting therapy, why her medication started going down the sink instead of down her throat, when she decided that submitting to her chemical shitstorm of a brain was a better idea than wrapping herself up in the embrace of self-care.

It falls out of her in a flood, because Dominique knows.

She started cutting therapy because Peter needed her: he needed first aid, or a hug, or someone to talk him through the panic attacks and the flashbacks and the nightmares, he needed a study partner, or someone to go see that super hipster café in Brooklyn that he wasn’t cool enough to go to on his own.

Dominique slaps her upside the head and demands how a woman like MJ could allow a  _boy_ to become more important than her well-being.

“It was  _easier_ ,” MJ says, quiet and trembling, sitting on the couch with her chin on her knees. “It was easier than wondering when the next time I was going to fall off the fucking wagon was, or when my friends were going to realize than I’m a fuckton more work than I’ll ever be worth, and maybe it’s easier to leave me behind because that’s what everyone’s always down anyways.” Her voice breaks on a sob and she curls into herself. Dominique runs a hand over her hair, coaxes her head down into her lap. MJ brings her hands up to cover her face. “I ran out of Lamictal because I was taking five a day instead of two.”

Dominique’s hands pause. “You could have died,  _mon chou_.”

“I was going to take my extras, all at once, I thought it would make the pain go away, I thought it would make the trembling stop, I thought it might help me _sleep_ , I’m so fucking tired, Dom,  _s’il te plait, laissez-moi dors, s’il te plait, s’il te plait_.” Her words trail off. The sounds of the room are nothing but her hiccupping, the light sobs squirming out of her throat. Her heads pounds and snarls.

“Talk to me, little bee,” Dominque says gently, peeling her hands from her face. She taps manicured fingernails against MJ’s temples. “What’s eating you?”

She laughs, damp from tears. “I ripped dad’s bible.”

Dominique sighs, and says nothing. She doesn’t hold her father-in-law to the same respect her sister does. She knows that he stood by and watched while his wife beat her children, while she screamed and drank and overdosed, slipping cocaine up her nostrils, down her throat, into her lungs. She was there when he tried to excuse it, when he tried to regain custody of his child, when he tried to have the restraining order taken off. He never realized that his daughter flinched when she saw a white Nissan Versa like her mom’s, or when people called her ‘sweetheart.’ He didn’t notice the self-defence courses. Or the spiralling health, the episodes.

To MJ, her father saved people from burning buildings, volunteered as a fireman, preached the word of God to the hungry and hurting, even if she didn’t believe in some all-powerful man who kept the world spinning and the shit happening. Alex had told Dominique that MJ remembered only her father as he had been when she was a child, when their mother’s target had been him instead of her.

But she knows that the child loved her father, even if Dominique would never understand why.

“Yes, you did,” She says. “He’ll forgive you, I’m sure.” She takes a deep breath and scrubs a hand down her face, the words on the tip of her tongue, urging past her nose and teeth and lips. “What about Peter and Ned?”

MJ shakes her head violently. “I can’t remember what I said to them, Dom, I can’t remember. I might’ve hurt them, or – or – ”

“You are not your mother,  _cherie_ ,” Dominique says.

MJ doesn’t move.

“Michelle,” She snaps, “You did not hit them, you did not manipulate them or use them to your own  _avantage_ or threaten them. You are  _better_ than your mother.”

“How do you know?” Her voice is so  _young_. It shakes at the beginnings of the words and wavers into silence nearer to the ends.

“Because I’m always right. And Peter and I had coffee a few days ago.”

MJ sits up, whipping around to stare at her sister, mouth fishing open and closed. “What the  _fuck_ , Dominique?”

“Do not raise your voice at me, MJ,” She says, soft and steel-laced. MJ clenches her jaw. “Peter and I had coffee because he was worried about you. This is the worst he’s ever seen you – it is the worst any of us have ever seen you – but he wanted to see if there was anything he could do to help.” She smiles. “He even mentioned that it might be his fault, in part at least. He said he had noticed that something was odd, that you were hanging out with them on days he knew you had therapy, but said nothing.” Chuckling, she adds, “Your boy has a hero complex, my dear.”

MJ looks away viciously. Her heart thrums in her chest and she can feel her pulse in her ribs and thumbs and temples, the bags under her eyes.

“I want to sleep for a week,” she declares. Dominique laughs, and pulls her into a hug.

“You will,  _ma fille,_ and then you will return to Midtown to bless them all with your non-sarcastic and charming disposition, hmm?”

MJ reappears at school the following Tuesday, quietly collecting assignments and papers from her teachers. She apologizes to each of them, and doesn’t leave the room until they say they accept. She corners Abraham, and thanks him for taking over the decathlon team, threatening bodily harm if they’ve slackened at all. He grins and tells he’s glad to have her back, accent thick and familiar, and nearly as comforting as Dominique’s.

She smiles.

Mr. Harrington informs her that there is always a place for her in decathlon, awkwardly crowning as his favourite student.

She almost cries.

Peter sits down next to her at lunch, sliding into his old spot with ease. Ned sits across from her, knocking his feet against hers beneath the table. He starts to ramble excitedly to Peter, without prompting, about the new  _The Last Jedi_ trailer that came out last week. Peter taps her elbow and says, “Are you going to come see it with us? It comes out in a month or so.”

She doesn’t look up from her book, though something surges up from her gut, wrapping around her fingernails and ribs.

Peter gestures wildly, mouth bright and grinning as he exchanges references with Ned. He throws back his head and laughs and attracts the gazes of the other students, who laugh or cringe or smile, charmed or put off by him.

She catches his hand when he nearly knocks over her now-empty tea. There’s a moment where she panics, thinking that he’ll pull away, or ―

He laces their fingers together, quipping at Ned without missing a beat.

Ned slides half a sandwich over to her between an Indiana Jones reference and a declaration about the beauty of Harrison Ford, then switches out her empty thermos with a new one. She can smell the blueberry-pomegranate and she squeezes Peter’s fingers, remembering that day with an ache in her gut.

With a low thrum of  _missed you_ and  _love you,_ she squeezes Peter’s  hand and knocks her feet against Ned’s.

Peter bends at an impossible angle, stretching around her to reach for her bag on the floor near her feet, their hands still clasped. He digs in the pocket that holds her rattling pill bottle, disguised in an Advil Liquid-Gel container. Ned plucks the bottle from his fingers and opens the child safety lock, flipping Peter the bird when he feigns surprised at his ability to open. He knocks two Latical tablets into his palm. Peter tugs her book gently from her grasp, marking her page with a finger. The pills land in her palm.

She wants to be righteously angry. She wants to snap at them and let the venom spill from her teeth, but her mind brings Dominique and Alex to the forefront. She can see them through a half-open bedroom door, arms wrapped around each other, slow-dancing to Wham! crying into each other’s necks, trembling just slightly. She sees the furrow between Peter’s eyebrows and the newsreport that spews words like  _unusually active_ and  _reckless_ and  _thrill-seeking_ about the Spider-Man.

She sees Ned’s grin, worn like ancient denim, like old sandstorms and river ruins and pathways and the smoothed peak of Dog Mountain.

Her therapist had carefully explained to her that this kind of ‘set back’ was completely normal,  especially for a teenager with fluctuating hormones and a brand new medication trying to kick into her system.

He doesn’t explain to her why she hurt them.

While she was in the middle of it, it hadn’t occurred to her that she might be hurting someone. It didn’t occur to her that her nieces and nephews avoided her eyes and ate their broccoli diligently so that she wouldn’t say anything about eating their vegetables, or that her teachers stopped calling on her for fear of an incident. She didn’t notice or didn’t care that Peter cried the day she snapped at him when he kissed her at her locker, the same way he’s done every school day for the past four months, the same day that she called him stupid and useless and unworthy of her or anyone else without a hint of joking or sarcasm in her mouth and eyes.

She lets the bitter pills sit on her tongue.

She takes a swig of tea, feels them wash down her throat to her belly.

They go back to talking, Peter’s cheeks flush pink, smiling a little, a little nervous, a lot happy.

“Fuck Indiana Jones, marry Han Solo, kill Harrison Ford,” Ned says firmly.

Peter squawks. “What the hell? How can you think that Indiana Jones has more sex appeal than Han Solo? That is blasphemous!”

“Think about it!” Ned says, avoiding Peter’s thrown candy bar wrapper. “We have  _so_ much more proof that Indy has game than Han Solo! He has sex with so many girls over the three movies.”

“Aren’t there like four movies?” MJ asks, biting on her lip when they turn to face her. Peter grins hugely, leaning in to press a quick kiss to her cheek, then to her nose and forehead and the other cheek, like he did the day he brought her tea – the day with the pomegranate-blueberry. He doesn’t kiss her on the mouth and she feels about as disappointed as Ned looks, sitting across from them with a slight frown.

“Yeah, but the newest one has  _aliens_ and ― “

“Shia LaBoeuf,” The three of them finish together.

MJ rolls her eyes and smiles.

Peter grins at her, flashing big brown eyes caught on hers, the lines of his cheekbones flushed with pink and happy. Her breath hitches and she rolls her eyes, and Ned calls them losers as he excuses himself to Betty Brant’s table. Peter and MJ don’t say a word.

She leans in to kiss him and stops a breath away.

She is stuck in uncertainty. She wants to touch Peter, wants to run her tongue across the roof of his mouth in the way that makes him shiver, wants to leave new marks against his jawline and down his throat and across his sharp collarbones in the way she’s never done before, wants to sigh and giggle and moan, and  _laugh_. She loves his laugh. The way he throws his whole body into it, going shy, dragging his fingers across the back of his neck. The way he laughs too loud, too long, too pretty.

She wants to make him tea and watch him make her breakfast, wants to name their cats after feminists and underrated scientists, and maybe their children too. She wants to know all the weird places he gets pimples and ingrown hairs. She wants to know what he looks like with grey hair, with wrinkles and laugh lines. She wants to know what makes them fight and shout, what makes them melt.

She wants him.

But he hasn’t moved to kiss her, and she’s hurt him. She’s broken his trust, shattered what he thought he knew of her and lost the unwavering support she always tried to offer to him.

So she ducks her head to press a kiss to his chin and jawline and pulse point, a goodbye, a see-you-later, an I-won’t-forget. She presses her face into the junction of his neck and shoulder, to blink the tears away.

She pulls away, picks up her book and the half a sandwich Ned left her.

His eye are red-rimmed, and he wipes his nose with the sleeve of his hoodie, leaving a streak of snot behind and isn’t that gross and so very  _Peter_.

“I love you,” She says, and knows it’s only the second time she’s said it. “I hurt you, and I’m sorry.” Her throat stops working and she tilts her head back, breathing hard out her nose. Without a waver in her voice, she says: “I’ll see you around, loser. Tell Ned I say thanks for the sandwich.”

And turns and walks away.

 


	3. coffee with her cream and honey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter's coffee date with Dominique ft flirting with strangers, guilt, and lots of love for MJ

The text pops up while he’s patrolling (giving tourists a tour of Queens, having his back flip form corrected by an eight-year-old gymnast named Helena, saying hi to Mr. Delmar, _eating_ ), and Karen notifies him with a curious lilt to her synthetic voice.

“Peter, you have a message from an unknown number asking if you’d like to go get coffee tomorrow. It is addressed from ‘Dominique.’”

“What?” He asks, mouth full of pickles and smushed bread, mask rolled up to his nose. “Dominique wants to get coffee?” He doesn’t do a spit take, but it’s a near thing.

“Yes, Peter, that’s what I said.” Karen’s seems exasperated. “Would you like me to reply?”

“But why would Dominique want to talk to _me_?”

Karen sighs, and for a split second, Peter can picture her. Her face and form varies depending on her mood, but in this moment, she looks an awful lot like a cross between MJ and May, unwilling to put up with his bullshit in any quantity.

“Because you were dating her daughter, who broke up with you in the middle of a manic episode,” Karen explains, with forced patience.

“No, no, no, no,” Peter says, resolutely taking a bite of sandwich.

He’s very good at avoidance tactics, and he’s been avoidance tactic-ing the MJ thing with May _and_ Ned _and_ Karen (and Mr. Stark, but that had been awkward for the both of them and they’d both given up easily) for too long to give up now.

He definitely doesn’t want to talk to his ex-girlfriend’s sister-in-law.

“You were dating MJ,” Karen says, her tone explicitly annoyed.

“Well, yeah—”

“And she did break up with you.”

“Yeah, I know, I was _there—”_

“And she did so while exhibiting signs of a manic episode, consistent with yours and Ned’s findings about Michelle’s mental illness. _Perhaps_ ,” Karen speaks over him as he tries to object, “She wishes to clarify that Michelle did not mean to hurt you. And,” She adds, sounding smug, “It’s the respectful thing to do.”

She’s got him there.

“Fuck, _fine_ ,” He says, without heat.

“There’s no need for profanity, Peter,” She chides.

Karen recites a text message to him: _Dominique! Uh, I’ve got Decathlon right after school tomorrow, but we could meet up at like 5? At that coffeeshop near the school? Marco’s or whatever?_

Despite the excessive question marks, it’s exactly what he would’ve said out loud. He mentions his surprise at her ability to mimic his speech and texting patterns, and she scoffs, saying something about analytic capabilities beyond his imaginings. He can practically see her eyeroll, and for a moment he misses MJ so acutely that it stings the roof of his mouth and the roots of his teeth.

He wants to watch her laugh at something he says, or a stupid comment Ned made. He wants her to fight with him, to yell, to explain to him how and why he’s wrong, and what he should do to fix it. He wants her to recommend books to him and vehemently disagree with his opinions of them. He wants her to hold his hand in the hallway, to kiss the top of his head, just to remind him he’s shorter. He wants her to leave marks on his neck, and scratches down his back, and he wants to leave bruises on her hips, wants to leave her lips swollen, her breath heaving.

He’s so in love with her.

And he misses her.

“Peter?” Karen asks, gentle. “Would you like me to send the message to Dominique Jones?”

He startles. “Yeah.” His voice cracks. “Thanks, Karen.”

She smiles, he can tell. “You’re welcome, Peter.”

 

The café is small and bustling, a narrow rectangle with the door at one end, the counter at the other, and two long bars lining the windows. He sits near the middle, one of his legs propped up on the stool next to him, reserving it for Dominique. Next to him is a tall, lanky guy with huge, thick dreads caught in a bun, his arms coated from shoulder to fingertips with tattoos.

Peter leans a little closer to him, and says, “I really love your lipstick.”

And he _really does_ – the lipstick is red-orange at the corners of his mouth, fading to yellow in the middle, shimmering slightly. Against his dark skin, it loves a little ethereal, like something he’d see in a fashion show or a Covergirl ad. The guy flinches, going tight around the eyes.

Peter frowns, tracking back over his words before his mouth falls open and he shakes his head vehemently, placing his hands palm-down on the bar counter. “Oh my God,” Peter He, eyes wide and earnest, “I’m so sorry, that sounded like kind of come-on, or a pervy remark and it totally wasn’t – I-I promise, I just genuinely think that lipstick looks amazing and I was wondering how you did that and where you got those colours because _what_ those are crazy, anyways—”

He’s cut off by laughter, loud and bright. It gets stuck on the guy’s nose, and he snorts, bringing a hand up to cover his mouth. Peter laughs, a little nervously.

“It’s fine,” The guy says, grinning. “God, you’re _adorable_ , you know that?” ‘Adorable’ comes out as the same word in French, and the rest of his words are accented, a little heavy around the edges.

His smile stands out against his cheekbones, pulls his lipstick wide. Big, eyeliner-ringed eyes catch on Peter’s, warm and a little shy.

Peter blushes, and looks down at his hands, smiling a little. He’s not used to being complimented by anyone other than May, who he knows is obliged to try and improve her nephew’s failing self-esteem. But he does know that he looks nicer than usual today – he’s wearing his best jeans, skinny and dark wash, and a light blue, linen button-up rolled up at the elbows. His hair isn’t styled, though, and it kind of sits in a disastrous floppy, sticky-uppy mess on top of his head.

“Uh,” Peter says, making eye contact with the guy. “Thanks? I mean, you too, you’re like—” Peter trails off, eyes once again distracted by the guy’s tattoos. They’re an intricate, light-lined mess of geometric shapes – animals and plants and insects. He has big wooden earrings trailing up and down his ears. Peter catches his eyes on his mouth, and then his eyes, big and light green and lined with sharp grey eyeliner and silver eye shadow.

“I guess, uh, you’re less _cute_ and more… very um gorgeous.” Peter swallows.

The guy grins. “Why, thank you, _mon chou_. I mean you manage both very elegantly. Hot, too,” He says it so casually Peter almost misses the meaning behind the words.

He nudges Peter’s elbow.

Peter squeaks.

“Can I ask your name?” He says, voice light and nonchalant, drumming long fingers against the table. He’s wearing silver rings all up and down his fingers, laced over the tattoos.

Peter cocks his head, and scratches the back of his neck. “Y-yeah, of course.”

There’s a beat of silence, and the guy starts to smile a little wider, snorting.

“Oh!” Peter’s eyes widen. “Peter – it’s Peter. I’m Peter. Parker.”

He awkwardly holds out a hand for him to shake.

The rings click as they knock together. “ _Enchantez, Pierre._ I’m Munroe,” He says, smiling. “And it’s from Mac – my sister bought it for me for Christmas last year, because there’s no way in fuck I was going to spend that much money on _lipstick_.” 

“Nice sister,” Peter says, and lets himself relax. “Maybe she’s the one I should be talking to,” He teases, grinning around his coffee mug.

Munroe looks a little surprised, but flushes beneath the dark skin of his cheeks. He leans a little closer to Peter, glances at his shoulders, flicking down to his thighs. “I think I can offer you something a little more _satisfying_ than my sister can, but the decision is entirely your own, Peter.”

Peter blushes, reaching up to tug on his earlobe.

He can’t believe he’s flirting with a _stranger_ (gorgeous stranger) in a café (best coffee in Queens).

(Mostly, he can’t believe it’s _mutual_ flirting, and not just Peter making a fool of himself).

“I’m pretty sure I made the right decision,” He says. He lets his eyes wander over Munroe again, feels his tongue come out to wet his lips and that was an accident but it probably didn’t look like one, and _wow_ he has no idea how this works. “She may be the one who buys the makeup, but you’re the one with the—” Peter’s voice catches. “—skills.”

He really didn’t mean for the innuendo, but it’s too late now, and Munroe looks _delighted_ , and Peter is a little proud.

“ _Salut, salope_!” A voice says, and Peter startles, turning sharply on his stool.

“Mrs. Jones!” Peter says, voice cracking.

“It’s good to see you,” She says, and it takes Peter a moment to realize that she’s not talking to him, but to Munroe. Laughing, she folds Munroe in a hug, reaching one of her hands out to squeeze Peter’s forearm.

“Peter, I see you’ve met my brother.”

Peter squawks and flushes red, covering his eyes and cheeks with his palms.

Dominique and Munroe laugh, leaning into each other, arms thrown around each other. Munroe presses a kiss to his sister’s forehead, who stands close to a foot shorter than him. He nudges her. “So, why are you here, sister? I’m assuming you didn’t come to interrupt my flirting with this very pretty young man.”

Peter blushes deeper, chewing his nails with wide eyes.  

Dominique rolls her eyes. “Actually, I’m here for the very pretty _young_ man. Emphasis on young, Munroe, he is not yet eighteen.”

Munroe groans and wrinkles his nose. “Oh _gross_ , I feel like an old _perv_. My apologies, Pierre.” As he says this, he reaches for a pen, lodged in his hair, grabbing a napkin and scrawling his number down quickly. He presses it into Peter’s hands, which shake a little bit.

“Let me know if you need any more makeup tips, Peter. Or if you need _anything_ else in a couple years, hmm?” Munroe says, pressing a kiss to Peter’s cheek, then to Dominique’s. “ _Aurevoir, cheris!_ ”

Peter’s cheeks are _flaming_ , and Dominique grins so wide, he thinks her cheeks might pull apart.

“So,” She says, raising an eyebrow, as she settles into the stool next to him. “You apparently have a thing for members of my family. Should I warn my husband? Or perhaps be worried myself?”

Peter groans.

Her laughter rings off the walls, just like Munroe’ and MJ’s.

He can’t really believe that he managed to flirt with anyone other than MJ. He has never been particularly good at multi-tasking and thinking about MJ and her hair and her eyes and the way she gets stuck just beneath the surface of his skin takes up the majority of his time. She jams in the space between his fingers, clinging to his sticky finger pads and palms.

It doesn’t really matter that Munroe is MJ’s brother-in-law – it’s just sort of… freaky? Uncomfortable? A bizarre and stirring coincidence?

It matters that he flirted with someone while being so in love with MJ that he wants her all the time. But if she legitimately doesn’t want to be with him, beneath all of her anxiety and the blur of medication and mental illness, he’ll respect that – and her. It’ll hurt like a bitch, probably leave him achy and raw and stinging for weeks, but he’ll move on.

The guilt still settles on his tongue and coats his teeth like cheap bubblegum.

It must show on his face, because Dominique smiles at him, reaching out to layer her hand on top of his. He stares at the contrast of their skin.

“This shame you feel is unnecessary, Pierre,” She says gently, “My brother is a handsome, charming man, and so are you. Wanting to speak and flirt with others is not unusual, or cheating, no matter what you are telling yourself. Michelle – what is the word? Dumped? – you with a lot of cruelty. You don’t owe her, and it’s not your job to make sure she’s safe all the time, or to make sure she’s taking her medications and taking showers, and getting out of bed. There is only so far support can go before it starts to take a toll on you.” Dominique’s voice is steady and even, easy to listen to, meditative and reassuring, and Peter relaxes incrementally. “When Michelle is… manic, she believes that everyone is below her. She believes that they are useless, unworthy – words I have no doubt she used with you.” Dominique pauses. Peter nods weakly, blinking back tears and staring intently at their hands.

“Michelle is a hard person to love—”

“—but everyone is,” Peter says quietly.

Dominique runs her thumb across the back of his hand. “Yes,” She says, “ But the thing you must remember is that it is never your responsibility to make sure that she is doing everything that she is supposed to be doing. Your responsibility rests with the decisions you make as an individual. As Spider-Man.” Peter glances up, smiling a little. He’d forgotten she knew about that. “And as Peter Parker. It’s your responsibility to make sure that you have a net of support, that you offer your support but not your soul, that you love unflinchingly, but with restraint, with courage. It takes courage to let someone fall, Peter. And Michelle is going to fall. She is going to forget to take her medication, and she is going to fall into the same spiral she is in right now. She is going to fall in love and hide from you because she deems it necessary.”

Peter stares at her. He’s not sure how he didn’t notice that her and Munroe are related – they have the same voice, the same tone, the same lilt and the same smile, somehow, despite different faces, different genetic codes.

“You have great power over the people you love, Peter,” She says, squeezing his hand, “And that means you have a great responsibility, to them and to yourself.”

His gaze flickers to the window. He catches sight of couples, mostly, like it’s the only thing he can see. He sees girls with tattoos and with collared shirts, boys with snapbacks and manbuns, he sees them holding hands and kissing, hugging and laughing.

Right now, he can’t imagine a moment without MJ. All of his best memories are with her, or with Ned. The three of them on his bed, laughing at gag reels from old movies, watching interviews with their favourite actors, and making fun of accents. Or the time that MJ dared him to do as many pirouettes as he could and he managed nine before falling over, knocking his head against the wall and prompting a scolding from a giggling aunt May about safe sex and boundaries and consent.

He remembers the decathlons they’ve all won – the hugs and team bonding. The adventures in hotel swimming pools, MJ’s long legs wrapped over his shoulders as they played chicken with Betty and Ned.

Their first time – and the three or four times that followed quickly after, MJ’s long legs wrapped over his shoulders for an entirely different reason.

He flushes, shifts and looks back at Dominique, trying to urge the memory of going down on her sister-in-law away from the forefront of his mind because that’s just _gross_.

Dominique laces their fingers together for a moment, and then presses a kiss to his forehead. “It’s not your fault, Peter, and it never will be. Now!” She adds, jumping up. “I need a Bailey’s, what can I get for you?”

He startles. “Oh, uh, I-I’ve got it, Mrs. Jones, it’s no problem.”

She groans. “ _Please_ don’t call me Mrs. Jones, you make me feel about seventy years old.”

He grins, and says, “Of course, Mrs. Jones,” before wincing as she slaps him upside the head and punches him in the arm.

She takes honey in her coffee, just like MJ does.

It kind of makes him want to cry.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is blue-by-auster, if you wanna rant or something 
> 
> (http://blue-by-auster.tumblr.com/)


End file.
